This is brutal!
I love what everybody has done. I'm all for open source and the community spirit, but setting this up is brutal. I've been at it for a day and a half and I QUIT! At some point you must weigh the time you spend configuring software against the savings in dollars you are getting for buying (getting free with the chance of monetary support) software that is poorly documented and difficult to configure.
I have the ATI TV Wonder card that came with Catalyst Media Center. Not a great program and I won't try and say it is. However, from the time I inserted the CD to the time I had an EPG loaded and was recording TV was maybe 15 minutes. I didn't need to do any channel mapping. It was effortless. I typed in my zip code and selected my cable provider and Boom! it was there. I didn't have to add plug-ins for basic functions and I didn't even need to read any documentation. There was a wizard that walked me through the process.
I just spent 30 minutes mapping channels for the WebEPG. There were no West Coast US channels to chose from so I used East Coast and figured I would just adjust the time (is this what timeshifting is all about for setting up channels?). After all of that I clicked Grab Now and was told "Total channels imported: 14" "Total Programs imported: 0"
Zero programs imported! WTF!!!
This is after I spent 20 minutes randomly clicking around because there are no instructions on how to use this. If you go to the Knowledge Base and type in "WebEPG" you get a series of JPG files that are screen shots. I don't need screen shots - I'm staring at the screen already.
Open Source is great. I'm a programmer by profession, but when someone writes a plug-in they are responsible for documenting it. There should be a Help button on the window that brings up a help file. You wouldn't write a program without an installation package and you shouldn't write one with out complete documentation.
Good luck with the effort guys.
Greg
I love what everybody has done. I'm all for open source and the community spirit, but setting this up is brutal. I've been at it for a day and a half and I QUIT! At some point you must weigh the time you spend configuring software against the savings in dollars you are getting for buying (getting free with the chance of monetary support) software that is poorly documented and difficult to configure.
I have the ATI TV Wonder card that came with Catalyst Media Center. Not a great program and I won't try and say it is. However, from the time I inserted the CD to the time I had an EPG loaded and was recording TV was maybe 15 minutes. I didn't need to do any channel mapping. It was effortless. I typed in my zip code and selected my cable provider and Boom! it was there. I didn't have to add plug-ins for basic functions and I didn't even need to read any documentation. There was a wizard that walked me through the process.
I just spent 30 minutes mapping channels for the WebEPG. There were no West Coast US channels to chose from so I used East Coast and figured I would just adjust the time (is this what timeshifting is all about for setting up channels?). After all of that I clicked Grab Now and was told "Total channels imported: 14" "Total Programs imported: 0"
Zero programs imported! WTF!!!
This is after I spent 20 minutes randomly clicking around because there are no instructions on how to use this. If you go to the Knowledge Base and type in "WebEPG" you get a series of JPG files that are screen shots. I don't need screen shots - I'm staring at the screen already.
Open Source is great. I'm a programmer by profession, but when someone writes a plug-in they are responsible for documenting it. There should be a Help button on the window that brings up a help file. You wouldn't write a program without an installation package and you shouldn't write one with out complete documentation.
Good luck with the effort guys.
Greg